Cases of iPhone 8 battery swelling cause concern

(ECNS) -- A man surnamed Liu in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, found the battery of his newly purchased iPhone 8 Plus swelled to the point of splitting open on Thursday, with the screen bouncing off, though with no traces of burning, Chinese media reported.

It marked the first case of an iPhone 8 Plus suffering from a swelling battery on the Chinese mainland, and the 7th separate report of its kind for the iPhone 8 series worldwide since it first went on sale on Sept. 22.

Although it remains unclear whether the new iPhone 8 battery swelling problem was accidental or a phone defect, customers can't help link it to battery explosions of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 in 2016.

U.S. website iFixit claimed in earlier days that batteries of the iPhone 8 plus came from the Samsung SDI factory, with SDI being the supplier of the Samsung Note 7.

Apple Inc. said preliminary investigations pointed to the swelling of the battery, but that it was no serious safety issue and had nothing to do with explosions. The company said it would announce detailed results of the probes once confirmed. However, it did not respond to public concerns about battery suppliers.

Battery problems signaled the decline of the brand, Wang Jianmin, a professor of management with the Beijing Normal University told Securities Daily.

Competition has disturbed the normal pace of new product research and development, resulting in loopholes in design and manufacturing, Wang added.

Wang Yanhui, secretary-general of the China Mobile Phone Alliance, said users should not worry too much even if the battery supplier was Samsung SDI, because batteries used by various brands were different if custom made. However, Apple should identify the problem and respond to user concerns as soon as possible.

Wang Yang, research supervisor at IHS Technology, told the paper that battery swelling was a normal phenomenon, but if there was a high incidence it meant the phones were flawed.

There were no long queues outside Apple stores following iPhone 8's debut. Moreover, prices of the phones quoted by stores on the online shopping site Taobao were 400 to 700 yuan lower than those published on Apple's official website. With the price fall coming even earlier compared to the iPhone 7, the market might not be so upbeat about the new phones, the paper said.